Ralph Steadman can be a slippery fellow, but then we already knew that.

The acclaimed British cartoonist who blazingly illustrated the acid scribblings of late gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson always seemed just one step out of frame, and out of reality. His bloodshot images of Thompson’s takedowns of politicians and other freaks helped make Rolling Stone the counterculture magazine it always wanted to be.

Steadman, just turned 78, initially seems a reluctant documentary subject in Charlie Paul’s For No Good Reason, opening Friday, although he eventually warms up and opens up about his decades of redefining cartooning.

He’s almost as difficult to pin down during an interview, which he does by telephone from a New York promotional stop. But would you ever expect a gonzo to meekly follow journalistic conventions?

Did it really take 15 years to make For No Good Reason?

It seemed like it. They came and set up shop, and it took two or three years for that. They had this idea to put light tubes in boxes and put them above my desk to light the board.

It seems in the movie as if you needed some persuasion to be in it. You say about the film at one point, “It’s become far more personal. It takes in the good and the bad.”

It’s a good quote, I wish I had said that.

You did. Were you perhaps worrying that the movie might spend too much time on your partnership with Hunter?

We thought that, but then I thought well, I dunno, it seems to have become as much about me. The point is that my work life and his work life became pretty close. And it was inevitable, it had to go that way. What the words and the pictures say, they don’t come to be the big picture necessarily, but it doesn’t matter if they do. Because that makes them fun. They became inescapably linked, and they absorbed each other. We were really creative partners.

You describe your artistic influences in the film, mentioning Picasso and Francis Bacon and also the “energy” of Rembrandt. What do you mean by “energy”?

Not just energy but also Rembrandt’s persistence with the picture, transforming and changing it. The way they followed each other, like the portraits of himself, which he did a number towards the end of his life. He was looking different at times, sad and hungry and all sorts of different ways. But he was examining the effect life has on you, projecting through the painting how he felt his inner self felt on the outside.

Have you ever thought of doing a feature-length animated film?

I’m not mad about animation. You don’t want to become a bore. That’s what my mother used to say: “I don’t want to become a bother.” It’s not a bad idea, though, if it’s done with friends.

You’ve done graphics books, including illustrations for an edition of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. I’d love to see you do his 1984.

I left that one (1984) because I thought it had been so caricatured. It had become a sort of icon, an unreal thing. I was more interested in the blood and guts of reality, like in Animal Farm.

Are you familiar with C — ksucker Blues, the infamous Rolling Stones film? I think it would be great to see you illustrate that.

I’ve heard of it but never seen it. The things going on in that is what I don’t really go for. It’s like, oh, I want to be rude. You know what I mean? But I’m a gentleman, an innocent. Also, to me it’s a bit corny to do that. You’ve got to be far more cool than that.

In For No Good Reason you say that if you ever learned how to draw properly, you’d change the world. Have you succeeded in either goal, in your estimation?

Of course I changed the world! It’s worse now than it ever was.

You take responsibility for that?

It is worse. It’s a wretched place. I think Steve Jobs did a lot to cause that. He checked out when he realized the whole damn thing was getting out of hand, thanks to computers.

Do you still fell you can change the world just by amusing people?

Um, I’m sure you can. But I’m just not a funny person. I’m sorry!

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